‘Squirrel is a gooner, la la la la,” sang the crowds at Highbury on Wednesday night as an unfortunate grey squirrel found himself on the pitch during the otherwise tense first leg of the Champions League semi-final between Arsenal and Villarreal. The boy sitting beside me was in fits. He and his dad had obviously not managed to get adjacent seats and as I watched the boy laugh it suddenly struck me that here on the North Bank, of all the unlikely places, it was probably safer for a child than it has ever been before.

Football has somehow become a family game: I don’t think twice about taking my children along to matches. I never went as a child but since attending by chance an Arsenal home match about 10 years ago I have been hooked.

Then, as now, tickets were almost impossible to obtain. You couldn’t even get on the waiting list for season tickets and I spent years trying, largely unsuccessfully, to get tickets in the family enclosure. Needless to say, when in 2003 I found myself in the position of being able to acquire two season tickets at Highbury I leapt at the chance. They were not exactly cheap but I have never for a single moment regretted spending the money.

My two oldest children, Tom and Ben, then 10 and 8, were thrilled at the prospect of coming with me. At the start of each season, they would sit down and ritually divide up the games between them, never forgetting from year to year who had had the first pick the previous season. Going to football matches soon became by far the most enjoyable thing that we did together and it still is.

However it has not exactly united our family. As my passion for Arsenal blossomed, I began to realise I was married to a Chelsea fan. The keener I got on Arsenal, the more unshakable became my husband Anthony’s commitment to Chelsea and shortly after I had I got my Arsenal season tickets he bought himself two at Chelsea.

The effect on our family can only be imagined. Tom and Ben, like me, already supported Arsenal and would not be swayed. Our daughter Emily was not as yet interested but was soon to follow suit. So our youngest son was my husband’s last hope.

In a flagrant attempt to buy his lastborn’s loyalty, my husband went out and bought him the complete Chelsea strip. James wavered. He instinctively wanted to remain friends with everyone and so would come down to breakfast wearing an Arsenal top with Chelsea shorts and socks. The hoots of derision from his siblings speedily put paid to that, though, and the red shirt was decisively discarded in favour of the blue.

We live with our divided loyalties as best we can and our lives are a lot more fun with football than they would be without it. Indeed, it seems that we are part of a wider trend: the archetypal image of a football supporter as male and working class is disappearing as fast as the popularity of the traditional English breakfast (not that I am yet surrounded by the sipping of cappuccinos and munching of croissants on the North Bank).

Grounds, as I said, are much safer than they used to be. Following the recommendations of the Taylor report into the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 the main clubs converted to all-seater stadiums. This has also had the inestimable advantage of making it possible to see what is happening on the pitch, even if you are something under 5ft.

Money has also played a part: tickets have become so expensive that the crowds have become more middle class. Public perception of football supporters has also changed, according to Mark Perryman, author of Ingerland: Travels with a Football Nation, published next month. “The most significant factor has been the break in the association between football and hooliganism,” he said.

He believes the turning point came when England fans travelled to Tokyo for the World Cup in 2002 and found — to their surprise — that they were made welcome. This unexpected popularity undermined the usual mantra that “nobody likes us, we don’t care”.

Gary Kitching, from Maltby, South Yorkshire, can understand. He took his four-year-old son, Will, on a month-long trip to Tokyo and felt it established “a friendship based on football that far exceeds simply being father and son”. In fact, they had such a good time that the whole family went to Portugal for Euro 2004 where their spot on the campsite, adorned with St George’s Cross flags became known as “Camp England”.

The explosion of media interest in football means that everybody knows more about football than they used to. There is much more football on television for a start: between them the terrestrial channels and Sky cover much of the Premiership, the FA Cup, the Champions League and the Carling Cup.

Football is present in our lives in so many ways. Images of footballers fill the tabloids and footballers are used to sell everything from trainers to sunglasses. Even Marks & Spencer, that embodiment of middle-of-the-road Britishness, jumped on the bandwagon when they used David Beckham to promote a range of boys’ clothing.

For those of us still in the throes of Premiership and Champions League battles it is a bit difficult to focus on the approach of the World Cup, that glorious, larger-than-life football fest that is now a mere 47 days away. My personal expectations are not great: it would be nice to see England do well, but what I shall particularly relish is the prospect of the whole family sitting down and cheering the same team.